The present invention relates generally to feeders for animals such as hogs, and more particularly to feeders of the type in which feed is dispensed from a discharge opening of a hopper onto a shelf from which the feed is swept by the animal, with its snout, into a trough located below the shelf.
One such animal feeder is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,036,798 to Brent King. In the King feeder, the feed hopper has an inclined sidewall extending downwardly and inwardly toward the discharge opening of the feed hopper, and the shelf and the inclined hopper sidewall comprise structure cooperating to permit the animal to sweep feed from the shelf into the trough while substantially preventing the animal from feeding directly from the shelf.
The King animal feeder has a gate located at the bottom of the inclined hopper sidewall and mounted for sliding movement along the hopper sidewall in a direction having a substantial vertical component. The gate has a lower edge normally located directly above the shelf, and the vertical distance between the gate's lower edge and the shelf determines the size of the discharge opening at the bottom of the hopper. The hopper has an adjustment mechanism manually actuable to move the gate and vary the distance between the gate's lower edge and the shelf, thereby to vary the size of the hopper's bottom discharge opening.
An animal feeder may be continuously bumped and jolted by the animals during feeding. In a feeder which has a gate adjustment mechanism, the continuous bumping and jolting by the animals may cause the adjustment mechanism to become out of proper adjustment, resulting in too much or too little feed to be supplied to the animals.